King Barack: Rule by decree, not law

July 14. 2013 5:09PMSeeing that his signature accomplishment, Obamacare, would be a disaster if implemented in full and on schedule, President Obama has had his administration issue rules to delay the implementaion of parts of the law. This follows his administration’s granting more than 1,000 waivers from requirements imposed by the law a few years ago. So Obama would be OK with the next President doing the same thing, right?

We like the results of these delays because we agree with the President’s implicit assumption that the law’s on-time implementation would be a bureaucratic and economic disaster. The trouble for the President is that the U.S. Constitution (Section 2, Article 3) states that “he shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed...”

This President has a history of ignoring laws he dislikes or of selectively enforcing them. From No Child Left Behind to immigration laws to election laws to Obamacare, he simply decrees what will be enforced and when. (Obamacare takes this even further by giving executive branch officials huge amounts of discretionary power to fill in the blanks of the law.)

Remember this precedent. The next time there is a Republican President, he could decide to ignore or issue waivers for Obamacare or other laws he dislikes. The left will go nuts. But when this monarchical discretion is exercised, remember that it was OK when Obama did it.